A man who recently walked free after being acquitted by the Supreme Court in the 2012 Chhawla gang-rape and murder case has been arrested by Delhi Police for allegedly killing an auto-rickshaw driver in Dwarka area on January 26, officials said on Saturday.
According to a senior police officer, the accused Vinod recently came out of jail where he was lodged for around 10 years in connection with gang-rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman in Delhi's Chhawla area.
Another person, identified as Pawan, has also been arrested for stabbing to death Anar Singh, a 44-year-old autorickshaw driver and a resident of Munirka, in Dwarka's Sector-13 in South-West Delhi.
Interrogation of the accused revealed that after boarding the auto-rickshaw, the duo tried to rob the driver on reaching Dwarka. When the driver resisted, they stabbed him in the neck and fled, police claimed.
The Supreme Court had on November 7 acquitted Vinod and two others in the Chhawla case, setting aside the Delhi High Court's August 26, 2014 order upholding the death sentence awarded by the trial court.
The gang-rape victim's mutilated body was found three days after she was abducted. The woman worked in Gurgaon's Cyber City area and belonged to Uttarakhand.
The aquittal had drawn protests from several quarters and the Delhi government sought a review by the apex court, saying the offence was “diabolic in nature exhibiting grave depravity and bestiality” and fell under the “rarest of rare” category.
Several review pleas including the one filed by the father of the deceased victim against the apex court verdict have also been filed.
The accused “raped and brutalised the prosecutrix in a moving car for several hours and finally continued to satisfy their depravity in a field close to Jhajjar, Haryana,” the review plea by the Delhi government alleged.
"They not only violated and brutalised her body by gang raping her and inflicting grave injuries upon her but continued their bestiality even upon the lifeless body of the victim resulting in grave post mortem injuries, especially on the sexual organs of the deceased," it alleged.
The top court while acquitting the three convicts had said the law does not permit courts to punish an accused on the basis of moral conviction or on suspicion alone.
It had made the observation while noting that a kind of agony and frustration may be caused to society in general and the family of the victim in particular if the accused involved in the heinous crime go unpunished or are acquitted.
It, however, held the prosecution failed to provide leading, cogent, clinching and clear evidence, including those related to DNA profiling and call detail records (CDRs), against the accused, and stated the trial court also acted as a “passive umpire”.
In 2014, a trial court awarded the death penalty to the three accused, terming the case “rarest of rare”.
Police had arrested the three men allegedly involved in the crime and claimed one of them took revenge after the woman spurned his advances.
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